The present invention relates to a lawn mower vehicle having a unitary drive-wheel assembly including just one DC motor driven support wheel, a trailing sulky and a vertical hinge connecting the trailing sulky to the drive-wheel assembly, so as to be especially suitable for use as an automatic robot-like lawn mower.
Many types of lawn mowers have been proposed in the past. For example, two are known that have an electric drive-wheel motor, two steering drive wheels and two idling wheels behind, all built on one chassis. Another vehicle, not a lawn mower, employs a forward drive assembly including one drive wheel and a gasoline engine. Like other tricycles in the art, it has a two-wheel trailer connected by a tilted post and bearing hinge.
The single unit lawn mowers of the prior art have one or more cutters mounted on the same chassis as are all the supporting wheels and are not capable of cutting a swath or wake of cut grass that remains centered about the path of the drive wheel. The path is always skewed toward the inside of each turn of vehicle redirection.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a single-drive wheel lawn mower vehicle capable of cutting a wake of cut grass that is always symmetrical about the path of the drive wheel.